In the delay management problem we decide how to react in case of delays in public transportation. More specific, the question is if connecting vehicles should wait for delayed feeder vehicles or if it is better to depart in time. As objective we consider the convenience over all customers, expressed as the average delay of a customer when arriving at his destination.We present path-based and activity-based integer programming models for the delay management problem and show the equivalence of these formulations. Based on these, we present a simplification of the (cubic) activity-based model which results in an integer linear program. We identify cases in which this linearization is correct, namely if the so-called never-meet property holds. Fortunately, this property is often almost satisfied in our practical data. Finally, we show how to find an optimal solution in linear time in case of the never-meet property.